Olivia Dreisinger is a disability writer, scholar, filmmaker, and PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. Dreisinger’s dissertation research explores how people with medically unexplained illnesses – illnesses that evade contemporary medical detections or explanations – build ethos or credibility. Her own fluctuating abilities often dictate how she produces work—a process that regularly leads her to new and generative mediums to explore. 

Dreisinger has two major projects in 2024: What Kind of Mother, a documentary about my mother’s suicide, and Alt Text Selfies, a collaborative project with artists Finnegan Shannon and Bojana Coklyat that celebrates alt text selfies (the image descriptions that accompany self-portraits online).

Dreisinger obtained her Master’s from McGill University, where she made a 3D animated feature-length film exploring disability in the fanfiction community. The film has been screened both internationally and domestically. 

In 2018, Dreisinger was awarded a Concept to Realization Grant through the Canada Council for the Arts to produce a documentary film about a service dog team. The film has been exhibited online, at a festival in Italy, and at numerous academic conferences. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the National Film Board of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

In 2021, Dreisinger received the Emerging Digital Artist Award from EQ Bank. In 2023, She was a part of two emerging filmmaker programs, DOXA’s Kris Anderson Connexions Mentorship program and VIFF’s Catalyst Mentorship program.